My place is in a relatively built up area rather than in one of the many small hills towns that have already been evacuated, yet the nearest of them is less than 10mins away by car.Temperatures in the mid 40's, winds of 100kms/hr, and an out of control bushfire upwind of me do not bode well.

Several relatively good things happened yesterday.Gigantic clouds of smoke blocked out the sun for most of the day so the temperature stayed in the mid 30's instead of climbing higher, then early in the afternoon the wind dropped and changed direction from north to south-west, pushing the fire away from the city fringes and back into the Mt Lofty Ranges, which also cleared much of the smoke.

My place is completely undamaged and is now out of danger but the fire is still out of control and spreading in all directions. All roads into the fire area are blocked.

1. The map.On the lower left of this pic is a pink area defining the outer north-eastern suburbs. This is where I live.

2. The road into the beautiful town of Gumeracha. Taken yesterday.

3. The smoke plume yesterday, taken from near the small town of One Tree Hill.

Emergency evacuation centers have been set up to care for people forced to evacuate their homes.Similarly emergency centers have been established to care for any lost/injured animals trying to escape from the fire.

The people and businesses of Adelaide have come in their thousands to provide food, drink and shelter to anyone/anything in need.

Special praise and thanks has to be made for the heroic efforts of the firefighters both on land and in the air.

Estimates of property damage cannot be made yet because it's just too dangerous to go and look and the smoke blocks any attempt from the air.

There are injuries but thankfully no reports of any deaths at this stage.

The weather over the next couple of days looks fairly benign but on Wednesday the forecast is for high temperatures and strong winds again. No rain is forecast.Hopefully the fire will be contained by then, but if not we face more critical times.

I don't know when things will get back to normal but I'll try to let you know what's going on.I'm dying to take some time off to watch Fucking Åmål again.

Sorry to hear this, Fish.Wish we could send over some of our immense amount of snowfall.

We were stricken by great forest fires as well, just a few towns from my own, after a long dry period around this time last year.Huge damages I remember, but thankfully no casualties. I hope you guys can avoid that too.

Dahls wrote:...Wish we could send over some of our immense amount of snowfall. ...

So do I.The supposed rainfall that came yesterday morning amounted to less than ½ a millimeter. Not even enough to wet the ground.

I remember you saying about your fires last year.I hope everyone has recovered from them.

This pic is undated but was probably taken on Saturday out towards One Tree Hill.

With the help of several hundred more firefighters from New South Wales and Victoria much is being done to build containment lines which hopefully will prevent too many flare-ups when the weather gets nasty again on Wednesday. These people are my heroes.

Much of the fire is now within containment lines and hopefully the fire's spread will be restricted in tomorrow's heat and wind.Damage assessment teams have been able to enter many areas but I guess the full extent won't be known for days yet.Some roads are now opened to let property owners back in, but many are still closed.

Still very hot but the strong winds never eventuated.A huge tropical low pressure system off the north-west coast of the country has cast its influence all the way to the south coast.The lightening isn't good on the tinder dry bush, but at about 2:30 this afternoon it started to rain at One Tree Hill.I'm laughing and crying at the same time. I hope there's plenty more to come.